Quote:
Originally Posted by aberdeen5698
The physical reality is that individual vehicles will never be as efficient as transit vehicles - that applies in terms of operating costs as well as the requirement for the road capacity needed to move rush hour crowds. Don't forget that all these technological innovations that people are looking forward to for individual cars will also be applied to transit. Driverless buses will bring huge economies to the operating costs of transit, just as it has for Skytrain.
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Even in the City of Vancouver, where transit usage is high, private vehicles have a 56% passenger load share, while transit is at 22%. That means driverless cars would have to be only 39% more efficient on city streets. With vehicle to vehicle communication, cars will be able to run in platoons through intersections giving us gains in efficiency far higher than 39%. Likely high enough efficiency that there will be bike lanes on every street. Don't be surprised if the Skytrain is no longer operating in 30 years. Elevated bike lanes! And I don't think that;s so far fetched. Look at how radically advanced computers and cell phones are compared to 30 years ago.